One of the really fun parts of my job is getting to act as the A.O.D. (administrator on duty) at various student activities. I love watching our students perform and compete. A couple months ago, our athletic director told me that he enjoys watching the coaches almost as much as he enjoys watching the kids, and he said that he often finds himself watching the bench more than he watches the actual competition. That stuck with me, and I have tried to do that more and more when I’m on duty.

This weekend I was able to watch our kids compete at the regional wrestling tournament. If you know anything about wrestling, you know there can be big stretches of downtime while you are waiting for your next athlete to compete. During that downtime, I found myself watching coaches from all over the region, and it was quite a learning experience for me.

Here’s an actual exchange I saw. Little Billy is a Senior. He loses in the early rounds, and he does not advance to the state tournament. His wrestling career is over. He’s obviously very upset. I was expecting a supportive arm around the neck of the young man and a couple of encouraging words like I’ve seen so many times before. Instead, I heard the coach say, “If you would have come to more of our summer practices, you would probably still be wrestling.”

ARE YOU KIDDING ME?! Listen, I do not pretend to know the relationship between that coach and that student. I am sure it is complex. HOWEVER, at this moment, there is no reason to put that on the young man. What good does that statement do? Who does that help?

Here’s another scene from the tournament. Little Jimmy is an underclassman. He’s wrestling for 5th place. If he wins, he still has a chance to challenge the 4th place wrestler for a state tournament birth. It’s a really close match, but Jimmy comes up short, losing by 1 point. His season is over, and he’s in tears. Again, I’m looking for this kid’s coach to love on him and tell him how proud he was of his underclassman for placing in the top 6 of a very tough regional tournament. Instead, his coach immediately went into all of the things that Jimmy did wrong.

Come on, man! Jimmy just wants to go be alone for a little while and get himself together. Now’s not the time to lay into him about all of the mistakes he made. He knows he messed up. Granted, he’s an underclassman and he can (and should) learn from those mistakes, but maybe today isn’t the best day to make sure he learns those lessons.

I know this is probably coming off as judgmental, but please do not read it that way. This is a learning opportunity, and I want to treat it as such. Unfortunately, this is the type of mistake that so many of us make early in our coaching careers. I know that I was guilty of very similar mistakes all too often in the early stages of my own career.

Why do we do this? What purpose does it serve? In moments like this, it certainly isn’t about doing what’s best for the athlete.

Generally, this mistake is very self-serving. We take so much pride in the performance of our athletes, and we put so much work into our coaching that it becomes very personal for us. It becomes so personal, in fact, that when things go South, we have to find a way to justify it or shift the blame. “If you would have just listened to what I said…” A simple statement like that puts the blame back on the kid, and it allows us to take it off of ourselves. It’s almost as if we are saying, “I’m a good coach, so this is has to be your fault.”

Of course, we do not do this intentionally. The brain is a powerful machine, and the things that the unconscious mind does in order to “protect” our psyche never cease to amaze me. In order for us to put a stop to the power of these unconscious defense mechanisms, we have to make a very conscious decision to shift our entire focus.

We have to make it about “them” and not about “us.”

If it’s truly about the kids, we automatically default to loving them and making them feel valued. In the situations I discussed above, if it’s really about them, I congratulate Billy on a great career. I make him feel like he was successful even though he did not meet his ultimate goal. I make sure Billy leaves high school believing that his 4-year investment in athletics was worthwhile. If I’m coaching little Jimmy, I make sure he knows that I am proud of him, and I let him know that next year he’s going to come back even better because of the lessons that we are going to learn from this season.

If it’s about us, we default to making sure we save face. We scream at the kid, and we shift the blame squarely onto his shoulders in order to make ourselves feel better about the situation.

How do we make this shift from “us” to “them?”

I can tell you exactly when that shift started happening for me. In 2008, I picked up a book called Season of Life by Jeffrey Marx. The book is a true story that documents a season that Marx spent following around a high school football coach named Joe Ehrmann. He was the defensive coordinator for a very successful high school football team, and I was blown away by his coaching style. Before each game, he’d ask his defensive unit, “what’s my job?” His boys would respond, “to love us!” He’d follow with a second question, “what’s your job?” They’d respond, “to love each other!”

What was I reading?! This guy was a former NFL player, and he was a successful football coach. On the outside, he would appear to be a real “man’s man,” but he’s on the sideline giving pre-game speeches about love. I couldn’t put the book down. I was fascinated by Ehrmann’s story and his desire to help his athletes become “men built for others,” and I knew from that point on that I wanted to be that type of coach. I didn’t necessarily know how to do it, but at least I had started down the right path.

A couple years later, Joe Ehrmann wrote his own book, InSideOut Coaching. In this book, Joe shares his story, and he really gets down to explaining the difference between a “transformational” coach and a “transactional” coach.

There’s no way I can do the book justice here, so I’m just going to give you a very simple description of those concepts. I absolutely encourage you to read the book.

A transactional coach looks at a kid and says “what can you do for me (or for our program)?” That kid’s value is based on what he brings to the table. If he helps us win, he’s valuable. If he doesn’t, he isn’t. We celebrate him when he wins, and we rip him when he fails. This is the type of coach that puts the blame back on the kid in order to make themselves feel better.

A transformational coach looks at a kid and says, “what can I do for you?” That’s a HUGE shift! Now, every kid has value, regardless of talent or ability. Every kid deserves to have a coach that believes in them and that wants to help them grow to become someone that will impact others.

I am so glad someone encouraged me to read Season of Life when they did. I wish I’d have read it before I started my coaching career, but I was too busy reading “coaching” books. At that point in time, I thought X’s and O’s were the most important thing, and that’s where I spent all of my time. It wasn’t until after I learned what a “transformational” coach was that I decided to be one.

I would wager that almost all of us start out as “transactional” coaches, even if we get into the profession with the best of intentions. The time that it takes for each of us to finally learn how to become transformational varies. This is where good head coaches and administrators can have such an impact. They can accelerate that learning curve, but in order to do that, they have to be intentional about teaching their young coaches the difference between being transactional and being transformational. That’s another one of the things I love about my job. I get the opportunity to coach coaches. In fact, I’m going to be speaking on this very topic at next month’s Coaches Leadership Academy. I’m fired up about sharing with our staff, and I hope that someone comes out of the meeting with a newfound desire to coach for impact rather than victories.

I know this was a long post, so if you are still with me, thank you so much for reading. This is something I am very passionate about, and I hope it is something you can use. If you know someone that might benefit from it, please pass it along.

If you haven’t read either of the books that I mentioned here, I highly encourage you to check them out. Season of Life is a much easier and quicker read. If you like that one, then you’ll probably be much more motivated to dig into InSideOut Coaching.